Download

The book is now finished and is available in a number of formats (thanks to many kind readers who took the time to make them). There are undoubtedly still typos and mistranslations, so keep commenting (or emailing cosmos @ cadet-nine.org) when you find them and I’ll continue to edit the PDF a couple times a year.

Please donotupload these files anywhere else for people to download. This is in case I ever get told I’m violating copyright or whatever and I have to take down the files or the entire site.

Here’s a quick FAQ from the questions I’ve seen in the comments.

1. Can I translate the story to X language?Yes, of course! If you want to send me a link, I can add it to the list of other translations on the site. Sending me an email (cosmos @ cadet-nine.org) is faster than leaving a comment.

2. What will you work on next/Will you translate X novel?I’m not currently looking to translate any other novels, but I do know about Shin Sekai Zero-nen. It should be complete at the end of 2018 and if someone uploads the scans I’m open to translating it.

3. Can I post the files to another site?There is always a chance that I’ll be told to take down the translation because of rights violations or something, so I would like to have control of where the files are (also easier to make sure people always get the most recent version). Please don’t upload the files to some other sharing site.

4. Can I donate?I’m really flattered by all the offers I’ve gotten, but I never expected to get any form of payment for this. If you’d like, donate the money to a good cause :) This is a list of reputable organizations.

As always, thanks for reading! If you have any pressing questions, you’ll get a faster reply by emailing me (cosmos @ cadet-nine.org) since I don’t check back here regularly.

245 Responses to Download

Hi. I am really sorry (I haven’t uploaded it so I guess I haven’t done something illegal yet). I used your pdf file and made a .epub with TOC, cover, and links. I wonder if you intrested on getting it so that you can upload it or just use it for your own purposes. I assume that you already knew this, but epubs are pretty sweet when it comes to reading novels, books, and texts on iPads, so it would be great if more people could get it.

oh no D: I don’t know if I can help with that since I don’t have an iPhone, but dwanex said that they work fine on iPads, so I assume there’s nothing wrong with the epub? Since I believe what works on one should work on the other?

Maybe someone else can chime in about this?

edit: I dug out my really old half-dead iPhone and gave it a shot. It does work, so I don’t think there’s a problem with the epub.

The epub should work. I tried it on my iPad air (iBooks and just now Marvin) and on Adobe Digital Edition. It was a while ago I used iTunes to sync my iPad so I can’t really give you support on that point. Because I jailbreaked my iPad air (it is kind of illegal and you shouldn’t do it unless you kind of know what it is about because there are disadvantages to it) I mainly use iFunbox to add files to my iPad. But this is how I would do it:
1. get the file on some other app which can read the file and then open the file in another application. I usually use Dropbox or iFunbox to sync.
2. find the file in the app and open it
3. it won’t open but if you get Dropbox it will ask whether you want to open the book in another application. do that and choose your reading app (personally I switched from iBooks to Marvin a while ago)

i recently discovered this site and i really really love Shinsekai Yori and was pleased to see that there was an epub version of this translation. Since you did part I-II, would you be so kind to tell me how you made these epubs? I like to read on my kindle, but pdfs are a pain xD You don’t have to tell me everything, just were to start. That would be pretty nice, and thank you in advance :)

Hi. I come from Poland and Shin Sekai Yori really charmed me. As i know, many people in my country love this novel as firmly as me and want to read it in their native language so i decided to start translating. Getting straight to the point, i took advantage of your translation. I hope you do not mind it, however, i want to make shure so if you have something against just reply me, and i will deleate it.

Hey, I was looking through the current edition of Part I-III and I found some minor mistakes, mostly with quotation marks:
On page 96, there is a backwards quotation mark in paragraph 6.
On page 131, there is a backwards quotation mark in paragraph 18.
On page 142, there is a backwards quotation mark in paragraph 19.
On page 155, there is a backwards quotation mark in paragraph 16.
On page 166, “nestling” should be a plural “nestlings” in paragraph 17.
On page 172, in the second to last paragraph there is a backwards quotation mark.
On page 175, there is a backwards quotation mark with improper spacing in paragraph 11.

Hi there, I just wanted to thank you. Really. For your time, effort and work.
I’ll be sure to read the whole thing (a few months ago I read already the first part, I think). And the work was just… Perfect. So, thanks again for willing to translate this novel :)

I’d like to say thank you for all your hard work! I’ve been wanting to read this series very badly since the anime came out. I finally got it in Korean but my Korean isn’t the best. It makes me happy that you took the time to translate the series because it helps a lot when I can’t understand certain phrases.
Just to let you know I appreciate all your hard work, thank you!

hi there… would you be interested in editing hitsuki no chaika for me?? im starting the project in july… would like to see many fans born because of the effort people around the globe translators
thanks!

Hi. I really love this anime, and I really want to read it when I learned that this anime was based on a book. I’m happy that I found this website. Thank you so much. I have a question though, how many chapters this book have?

I really thank you so much for making this translation.. I know it’s not easy..
I got really interested in reading the novel after finishing the anime, which was spectacular while there’re points that feels inadequate, & the books are always better than whatever adaptations that were made from them..
Pls keep up a good work, for I’ll be eagerly awaiting new releases..

Hi… I follow you and the project since January 2013… Every two days I check if there’s a new post…
The true is, I’ve just read the first chapter, and some posts, sometimes…. I’ve watched the anime when It came out in 2012 and I really apreciate the work you’ve done so far. I understand that my words are meaningless, why wouldn’t I write something before? Godness, the time flew in a blink of a eye. At first I tought you would gave up the whole project, but even if you travelled for months, and studied for exams you still have continued translating. I don’t even know if my english is correct, so I’m sorry. I’ll support you, until the end from Italy! Thank you. Sincerely.

Thank you very much for your hard work. I´ve just finished the anime and I may say that was incredible. I hope you´ll continue with this and be sure that I´m gonna be supporting you! Sorry if I make any writing mistake.

Oh my God, thank you for your work. The anime is one of my favorite and I was so sad I couldn’t read the original novel somewhere. But now I can, thanks to you. Be sure I’ll follow and support your work until the end. Thank you from Belgium and sorry for my english :D.

This is truly a feat of greatness! I thank you from the bottom of my heart for translating this wonderful novel series. It’s one of the best dystopian fiction novels around and you have brought it to life for your English speaking readers :) I have directed many of my fellow book lovers to your site and we are all cheering you on as you finish this amazing translation achievement! Good work and we all look forward to the finished series! :) :) :) THANK YOU!

Thank you so much for this project, I appreciate it greatly that you are willing to translate the novel for the fan community. I hope you get enough credit for the hard work you are doing.
Aside from enjoying the story, I’m using your translation as reference to work on my Japanese.
I have a few questions: which country are you from? Where did you learn Japanese?
I study to be a translator, and I am writing a report on non-professional translation and subtitling. Would you let me interview you?
Even if you’re not interested, thank you for what you’re doing, keep up the amazing work!

Oh sure, I don’t mind, though I don’t know how much I can help. You can email me at cosmos @ cadet-nine.org, or just use this comment thread, whichever is easier.
I’m from the USA, took Japanese for a year in college, then studied abroad for a year in Tokyo, then took another semester of Japanese back in college.
Let me know if you have any other questions; I’ll do my best to answer!

I remember seeing a post floating about your translations on tumblr back when the anime was airing/finishing up and I never really did got around to reading it until now and honestly – thank you so much for all your time!! i’m only about a hundred pages in but the novel is just amazing so far & really !! thank you so much again!!

I tried it on pc this time to confirm. The duplicate part starts is at the middle of part IV chapter 2.
The chapter is supposed to end with words: “Tomiko’s words echoed heavily in my chest.”
But its written twice, with duplicate beginning with words: “We rode in a windowless houseboat…”

Chapter 2 is basically written twice, but it looks like its all one chapter.
Here is a picture describing where exactly the first instance ends and second one begins all over.http://a.pomf.se/ajgqds.Png

It’s not that much of a problem since you can just skip to chapter 3, but it’s still kinda confusing.

Hi eerabit,
First off , thanks for translating the novel. I choose my sources of entertainment very carefully so that they fit my specific desires. I wanted to watch some anime and chose shinsekai no yori after reading through some top 10 lists on the web. After the 3rd episode something about the story drew me in and upon learning the anime was an adaptation from a novel I stopped watching the anime and searched for a translation of the novel online which led me here. Anyway I finished part I and in the pdf p. 73-74 “The thing definitely resembled and minoshiro at first glance” perhaps the “and” should be replaced by “a”?

bloody good read, books are the least effective form of entertainment for me, yet reading this gave me the most excitment I had for a while.
Thank you for your hardwork, your courage of putting it out on the web, your generosity for sharing it to the whole world of English speakers.

Um, I also have another question. how can a person like me support you?
You’ve done a lot and I feel bad not giving anything back. I am serious in supporting you with what little resource I have (I’m a student)

hey dust,
thanks for reading; I’m glad you enjoy the story! actually, letting me know whenever you find a typo would be great support (I can assure you there’s a lot). I don’t spend much time proofreading, so it’s really helpful when people point out stuff that needs fixing (:

In part II p. 81 “Although this wasn’t a prince’s kiss, it seemed to have
the same effect.” as the person kissing was saki, wouldn’t it be a “princess’s kiss”?

Thanks.
I also caught some awkward sentence structures every once in a while but as English is not my native language plus I dunno the Japanese original context there wasn’t much I could do.
Sorry.
It has been a very comfortable read for me, usually when I read English books I pause frequently to look up vocab. You translated the novel with simple yet fitting words, I’m curious was the novel in Japanese also written in easy to understand words or it was a choice of yours to make it easy to read when you translated the text?

the japanese text put “prince’s” so i kept it that way, I guess referring to the stereotype that princes can wake people up with a kiss haha
and yeah, the vocab in the japanese version is also pretty straightforward so I didn’t have to simplify anything

I see, it must be the next couple lines that threw me off
“So the prince didn’t wake from the princess’s kiss, but from the lingering aroma of food.” also at part II page 81. Here the prince is Satoru I think, as he is the one waking up, therfore the princess must be Saki.
But Saki was just referred to as the prince earlier (thanks for your clarification “Although this wasn’t a prince’s kiss, it seemed to have the same effect.”) so the sudden role reversal confused me.

This must be something special of the Japanese language that I don’t understand :)

you must think I’m awfully nit-picky but as this is the “way” to support you I can only tread forward whenever I find any little “imbalances” in the novel and present it to you.

“Squonk shared some of our dried meat.” Part IV p.44 The scenario suggests that most of the food came from Mamoru, assuming Squonk has no food himself it would be weird to “share” something he doesn’t own. I’m thinking perhpas the group shared some of their dried meat with Squonk which may make more sense.

This one is kind of stumping me though. Because to me, the sentence I wrote means exactly what you think it should be corrected to (that the meat belongs to Mamoru, and he’s sharing it with Squonk), since it says “our dried meat”, where “our” refers to the kids, and Squonk is taking a share of it.

It’s possible this is a regional usage of the word; I’ll have to look into it some more

“Squonk shared some of our dried meat” the image I had initially (with doubt) was that Squonk took the bag of Mamoru’s dried meat and walked around the room handing out the dried meat to the humans.
BUT that is actually not the case
With context from earlier in the novel, it would suggest that Squonk “got a share of dried meat from the humans”. (thanks to your clarification)

Ummm….here goes my attempt of forming an analogy
1. “During Halloween, I shared some of my friend’s candies”
Image: My friend says, “Yo dust, help me distribute my candy to others” (Dust grabs some of his friend’s candies and give it to others)

“shared” in the sentence “Squonk shared some of our dried meat” seems to have more likeness with the meaning of “received”. Yet unfortunately the word “shared” & “received” are very different to me that I failed to make the connection…..(sigh)

I hope this expresses my thoughts clearly and be of help to you. If my tone came across as rude or kinda snobbish please know that it was not intended in any way :/

Just dropping by to say that there are still people who are constantly reading the translation. I really appreciate all the effort you’ve put into translating this masterpiece and can’t thank you enough.

I had downloaded that translation and lined it up for a read right after I finished Shinsekai Yori: I’m secretly relieved it’s only 188 pages.

It’s good to know that you’ll help with working on improvements.
Out of interest, how did you come to learn Japanese? I’m interested in maybe taking courses in it while still in college, but there are reasons I shouldn’t.

Just out of interest, I suppose. I have a whole list of languages I want to learn, but Japanese is the only one I’ve actually taken classes in. I definitely think it’s easier to learn in school, if you have time for it.

Hi ^^ I’m from Italy and i really really love Shin Sekai Yori. The people who was working on the italian translation stop the work (like at page 10) so i was thinking to translate it by myself. So, can I use your translation if is not a problem? And if I may ask , could you upload my translated version (when it will be over) on your site? Because many italian people read it from here and it would be easy for them to find the italian translation here instead of searching it on the web or asking everywhere (sorry if i made some grammatical mistake)

I don’t if you’ve already received files from someone else, but if it’s necessary, I could collect the text of all the chapters in the book onto individual files (I mean, onto Word files and then convert those to html), and then email them to you for making the epub. It would take a week or so because I’m a bit busy right now, but I’d be willing to do it. Although, you have to let me know if anyone else gave them (or is going to give them) to you.

Thanks for translating this novel! I really would like to use your translation to translate the novel into dutch! If that’s ok of course! Also why don’t you contact the writer or the publisher for maybe releasing this piece of work? Or did you already? Would love to hear :)

You could try to contact regular publishing companies, I mean the ones that publish translations or are open to various sci-fi fantasy types of novels. But if none of them want/trust your translation and you’re determined to get it officially published somehow, you could always use a self-publishing platform. For example, there’s Smashwords, where you can publish your book just as an ebook (it could be a combination of epub, mobi, and azw3).

The work you’ve done translating this book is wonderful. It gave me courage to do the same. I just found out about this story when it was released as an anime; how surprised I was to learn that it was based on a book. I’ve been quite a long time interested about translation, so, after reading a bit of yours, I thought it wound be nice to do the same, even though I wasn’t so confident about my English. I am from Brazil and I am kind of translating your translation to my language, in order to practice and learn English more, while I read this magnificent story. I hope it’s okay for you, I am just doing it for me. My best wishes to you. =)

Page 322, the second-to last paragraph (last full graph on the page) starts, “…so using psychokinesis, cantus in other words, steals energy from the sun and decreases its entropy, making it age faster.”

It might be a difference in the way Japanese linguistically handles the concept, though I wouldn’t know, but in English, this should almost certainly be “…increases its entropy…,” not “decreases.” Decreasing the sun’s entropy would be akin to giving energy to the sun, rather than taking it away, so that doesn’t work with the rest of what Satoru is saying.

As I understand it, the sun is like a huge fiery ball of entropy and every joule of energy that leaves the sun decreases its entropy by some small amount over time. So decreasing its entropy and taking away its energy go hand in hand.

Oops, you are correct. Ignore my previous comment. Apparently It’s been a while since physics. I had to look up the formula again, since entropy is one of those overloaded terms with too many different contextual uses. Thanks!

I suppose the entropy of the sun itself may decrease but the total entropy increases due to the emission of the light. It’s a kind of strange way to put it, but I think it’s ultimately technically correct.

I think for the term to make the most sense, ‘entropy’ should be replaced with ‘enthalpy’, because stealing the sun’s energy would decrease its enthalpy, not necissarily its entropy.

About the Epubs: Jan’s version is pretty good because the chapters are marked (unlike in mine, where only the parts are marked), but actually he accidentally left out the text of the footnotes. I guess the footnote text is easy to miss when you’re just copying because it’s a lighter grey.

Anyone who is working on improving the epubs at the moment, I encourage you to use mine. All that needs to be done with it is marking the chapters and maybe fixing the text style and linking the endnotes.

Or you could just wait until Eerabbit is done editing Part VI and create one from scratch yourself.

Actually, I’m going to update the epub to mark the chapters – but that’s all I’m going to do. If anyone wants to fix it up from there, go ahead. Also, for anyone who wants to work with it, you can get the original Word file (on which I collected all the novel’s text) from Eerabbit by email.

Thank you for the pdf, and thank you again for the translation !
a few notes:
– Part 5, chapter 3 is indicated as “1” instead of 3 (p337)
– Part 2, chapter 4 does not start on a new page (p126)
– Part 4, chapter 4 does not start on a new page (p267)

Alright, everyone, the updated version of my epub is up now, along with conversions to mobi, azw3, and pdf.

This as far as I’m going with the ebook formatting. I did create the epub using Calibre, so some might say it’s not ideal.

As I mentioned before, if you want to make your own epub, I did send the Word file with all the text to Eerabbit through email, so you can go ahead and use that rather than having to copy it all over again.

Thanks so much for your dedicated translation and hard work! I’m so happy that you finished translating the novel. I ended up reading the whole thing in one sitting, and it added greatly to the world of SSY after I watched the anime. Again, thanks for your hard work and great job! This is one of the best translations that I have read.

Thank you so much for this amazing work :D. To tell you the truth, I waited for the translation to be finished to start reading it (I was veeery patient).
Several years ago I didn’t even imagine this wonderful result. Thanks again, and congratulations, I’m astonished for the constant effort you put into it for sooo long :).

On the other hand, English is not my first language, and not even my second one, so I probably overlooked some mistakes (or invented new ones :S). Anyway, please have a look at these sentences (page numbers are from the final pdf)
Page 8: “…Loneliness became is only companion and confidant.”. Shouldn’t it be “his” instead of “is”?

Page 43: “Oh yeah! So then at he very end,…”. I think it should be “at the”.

Page 185: “…they would know that he had his ignored orders and helped us.” This sentence sounds weird to me. I would’ve expected “had his orders ignored” or “had ignored his orders”.

Page 222: “…Even if they think they think they can control …” Well, in my language we rarely say something like that. I think there is an extra “they think”.

Page 306: “…The sun’s lifetime is supposed to be around five hundred thousand years…” I don’t know what the author wrote, but I think you should check the translation of that number, since the actual estimated sun’s lifetime is around 5 billion years.

Page 335: “…The must have somehow found out…”. I think it’s “They” instead of “The”.

Page 470: “…Satoru took of his clothes…”. I think it is “took off”.

Page 475-476: I don’t know if I missed something, but the name “Squeaker” was mentioned twice, is this guy Squealer?

Page 480: “…began to emerge The last to come was the queen…”. I think there is a missing punctuation mark between “emerge” and “The”.

Finally, I’ve recommended this translation to a lot of friends. I hope they can enjoy it as I did :D.

Thnx ,for the translation…reading the novel after the anime feels great,since the novel has things which are usually left out in the anime,and also the novel tries to make the reader envisage the actual message and surroundings that the author deeply wants to convey (:, thnx again .XD

どもありがとうございました！I can’t imagine the hours of work you put into this, and I wanted to take a moment and let you know it’s greatly appreciated. It’s a small thing compared to all your hard work, but, again, thank you!

Hi, thank you very much for the translation! I’ve been waiting to find the translated version of this novel and what you did is an amazing work!
I watched the anime few years ago and still have the urge to understand more about the story and the issue raised in this anime and when I found your translation, I couldn’t be more happy! I really appreciate your hardwork!

English is not my first language so forgive me for any mistake in my writing. I’m from Indonesia and I’m interested to translate your work into Indonesian language in order to practice my English. I hope that’s okay for you! So, If I ever done the Indonesian version, would you mind upload it in this website so people that looking for Indonesia’s version can find it easily? Again, thank you!

Hi,
Thank you so much for putting this much work into this book. I saw the anime, loved it, and as soon as I discovered it was based on a novel I had to go looking for it. I wish there was a way to get hard copies as not everyone likes to read digitally, , but I am already beyond excited about sharing it with my non-anime friends who are willing to read online. Again, thank you so so much for making this available.

1. Rabbit hasn’t responded to anyone in a couple months. He/she’s probably busy with college/work. Rabbit started this back in 2012 if I’m not mistaken, so you probably won’t get an answer.
2. I’d assume as long as you don’t claim it’s your own work, you can use the translation. Give credit where credit is due.
3. Are you translating it into spanish? If so then it would be your “original” work anyway.

There were almost no errors, the translation was smooth, and I never noticed a lack of transmission of the author’s ideas. That is really impressive.

I originally downloaded this back in June and it’s taken me all the way until now to finish it.
Such a beautiful novel and the imagination of the author….

Reading the comments above, it seems like there is a new prequel novel. I guess I can say that I am actually not too happy to hear that because now I’ll worry about when I can finally read it.

Either way, thanks for your great translation work over the 3-4 years and clever imagination. I know that literal translations and actually conveying the author’s message is difficult to do, especially with kanji.
There were so many life lessons, emotional scenes, and scary moments in the novel that it reminded me of a series I loved when I was a kid called “The Night Angel trilogy”. I think there are some similarities between the two.

And to end this, I can imagine you (or someone else) will be able to translate the new prequel because… “The power of imagination is what changes everything.”

Can anyone explain the words that are used for ‘Emperor of Eternal Delight’ and how they are pronounced in Japanese? I’m trying to understand the anime a bit better and I’m at a loss. The individual words don’t translate to anything that I thought I heard there. He says something like “daikanketetoareena”. Perhaps ‘kanke’ is ‘delight’ and ‘teto’ is meant to be ‘tenno’ (emperor) even though he definitely says it with a ‘t’. I don’t know how it all fits together or where the ‘eternal’ comes in. Is ‘dai’ here a particle?

I found a couple of minor typos which I’ve listed below. I don’t have page numbers for them since I just took them down as I went along, but a regular search should find the pages easily.

> Speaking of irony, Tokyo was another prime example. [It’s] concrete-clad facade had been created…
> Try to get your breathing back to normal before we reach Screen [r]ock. (I think Screen Rock was used everywhere else)
> His opinion was so typical of an optimistic scientist (missing period)

Oh..
Since you’re recommending to buy the book, and since I want to do so..
Could you leave out some source?
I’ve been going through eBay, Amazon and such..
But I’m having a hard time ascertaining whether the book I find is the single volume edition release of the book, or not..
I aim to acquire the single volume release.. For example.. That’s just a single something..
I think it’d be great if you’d somehow post a guideline for as to how to buy the book.

I’m afraid I don’t know where to find the single-volume version. Something that might help is if it has any of these characters 上，中，下 on the front, then it’s definitely not a single-volume. Though I’d still ask the seller to be sure.
Sorry, wish I could be more help!

Even though it’s a ‘non-professional’ fan translation, it’s written better than most books that pass under my nose – and I read about 2-3 novels a month, for years now. You should take great pride in this endeavor you’ve undertaken!

Thank you very much for the translation! It’s amazing! It’s really helpful for me – and i like this novel :) By the way, could I ask one thing here – I’m doing a academic program about dystopian young adult novel research now. Just wonder if there’s anyone here like such kind of books [both West and East] who would like join my discussion group?The only requirement is age 20-30, from the West (Uk, US and Canada will be best), and join the discussion regularly [it won’t be too many times]. An academic invitation but also a fan group invitation – if anyone here have interest, please contact with me: andrettacat9@gmail.com Sorry for any disturbing. [This invitation is available before the end of June]

hey, sorry for the super late reply! The pdf is always the most updated version. The online version is pretty much never updated anymore, and there are only epub versions when a nice reader decides to make them :)

I had downloaded the December version of the PDF and I just noticed a new August version had come out, so I did a comparison on the PDFs and noticed a few errors on the new version. They’re mostly just font encoding errors on the symbol characters, here are screenshots of the comparison on the affected pages (left is December version, right is August version):

Are you really not going to translate 新世界ゼロ年? You’re the only one who managed to finish a full translation and no one else is picking up on that series :( I really would love reading it~~~~
Thank you as always for this amazing work :)

It’s a prequel to Shinsekai Yori that it’s been running on this magazine(?)「小説現代」 Shousetsu Gendai. It follows the events of boy A, 1000 years prior to the events of Shinsekai Yori. Just a few pages each volume and it’s not finished yet. No one has compiled it and I cannot find almost any information either. Just some Chinese or Japanese blogs that made a small review, but I can barely understand it :/

hey! sorry for the super late reply. It looks like some pdfs are slowly being uploaded to the shousetsu gendai site, but i saw on a japanese blog that the these files aren’t from the beginning of the story and i haven’t been able to find any uploads of the old issues of shousetsu gendai. as far as i know the story was predicted to be finished at the end of 2018, but i haven’t seen or heard anything about it actually being finished :(

Thank you very much for all of your effort in this translation! I’m Japanese, and a big fan of the original novel. Since I’m learning to improve my English, I had been looking for an English translation of it.

I just started reading. I’ll leave comments later if I find something I can help you.

Actually they departed back to the town at this point of time. Therefore it is like;
“The trio from the committee trio left me behind.”

“Insomniacs have come to my temple for this exact purpose, though that was a long time ago. Anyway, spending an entire night not sleeping, but not doing anything else either is a waste of time, in my opinion. Once, there was a sermon I had to give, but no one wanted to listen to it, so I found a bunch of insomniacs and made it a kind of gathering for them.”

It was not the priest’s opinion but the opinion of an insomniac.
He (or she) asked the priest to tell a story not to sleep, but to learn something good for his life from it. Then (maybe on another day), upon this offer, the priest gave a sermon for a bunch of insomniacs. As a result, they easily fell asleep.

So, it is like;
“Though it was a long time ago, an insomniac came to my temple, and asked me to give a story of life lessons because spending an entire night not sleeping, but not doing anything else either was a waste of time. So, I determined to give a sermon for insomniacs.”

““All your desires have been burned away. Let the ashes return to the vast, wild earth.””

All your desires are going to be burned away
*Just a matter of tense

“Maria said, turning my head to face her and rubbing her forehead against mine.”

Actually Maria did not turn Saki’s head to face her in this sentence.
It was like hugging Saki from behind.

“Since we had not seen any altered animals in our field trips until now, I thought it was reasonable that we were intrigued by the pouch cows.”

It is like;
“Although we had seen many altered animals there with much more weird appearances, I thought it was reasonable that we were intrigued by the pouch cows.”

It might seem like negative sentence, but it is a kind of tag question.
The nuance is “We are just competing, aren’t we?”
“We” is apparently Saki and Satoru.

“I was concentrating so hard on my own cards that I’m still not entirely sure what she did. ”

For this part, the nuance is;
“I still cannot imagine how she could have made such a serious mistake while everyone was supposed to move the cards very carefully.”

“I was thinking the same thing as Maria.”
You can see 同, and it means “the same” but in this context, it says;
“Maria said compassionately”

“I calmed down, drove their voices out of my mind and chanted my mantra.”
The nuance is like;
“I calmed down, and chanted my mantra in a whispering voice so as not to be heard.”

“{If we were allowed to use floating pieces, we would be able to use the ball to absorb any impacts the pusher might sustain.}”

I assume it came from the confusing word “cushion”, but in this Japanese context it does not actually mean “a cushion”.
In Japanese, “cushion” sometimes means just an object of mediation.
In this context, it means mediation of cantus.

“If we were allowed to use floating pieces, we would be able to cast a cantus almost directly to the ball by using the floating piece to push the ball.”

Sorry for my poor expressions.
I really do respect those cool translations of yours.
Please consider my comments as just a reference for you from the perspective of a Japanese native.

>If we could keep this up for a little longer, they will have wasted almost two whole minutes.

It might seem they did not waste almost two whole minutes, but actually they did.
The meaning of “longer” here is longer than what she had described.
In other words, she just did not remember the whole conversation.

So, I would suggest;
“We actually kept this up for a little longer, so they should have wasted almost two whole minutes.”

>and had just agreed on a starting point (isn’t that enough already?), when Satoru started telling one of his tall tales as an example.

What Saki agreed (or admitted) was the fact that one of Satoru’s tall tales was the starting point of the theme of their summer camp. (even though she did not want to admit the whole story)

>A bunch of objections came to mind, but I kept quiet. If I said anything, it would mean that I was accepting his ridiculous story.

Actually Saki was too confused to say anything because she felt what Satoru said was completely nonsense.
It is like;
“A bunch of objections came to mind, but I could not say anything. If we applied his logic, it would mean that the more ridiculous the story is, the more reliable it is.”

>Who knows what he was saying out of desperation. We all turned to look at him.
>“Um, I’m not too sure.”
>“Explain it anyway.”

It might seem the first line was Satoru’s but it was spoken by Shun. The 2nd line was Saki’s.
Both were speaking to Satoru.
They are like;
“Um, I cannot imagine the situation where cantus doesn’t work.”
“Explain it.””

>“To lay an egg of this size, the bird must be pretty big, right?”

Since Satoru was already aware at this point that the eggs were born by a haythatcher, I would suggest that it should be “the haythatcher” instead of “the bird”.

>But I never knew it used the Devil’s Hand as a defense against rat snakes and rosary snakes until today.

I think using the Devil’s Hand should rather be for offensive purpose for haythatchers because it is not for protecting their actual eggs, but for killing the other snakes.
My suggestion;
“But I never knew the Devil’s Hand, nor the fact that it was used for killing those rivals such as rat snakes and rosary snakes by then.”

>but I seem to remember feeling slightly uncomfortable at that time. It was a real-life example of the adaptation and natural selection mentioned in the textbook. In order to survive, even something like the Devil’s Hand could be evolved.

Saki was questioning whether this Devil’s Hand has been evolved “naturally”.
“but I seem to remember feeling slightly uncomfortable at that time. Can it really be the case of the adaptation and natural selection mentioned in the textbook in which even something like the Devil’s Hand could be evolved?”

>“Yeah, but it’s a river, so there will always be some waves.
>Shun chanted his mantra. “Ready? I’m gong to flatten the surface.””

Both of these lines were spoken by Shun. (The first one was not Saki’s)
He observed the surface of river hoping that it went totally flat, but to stop rowing was not enough for it. => 1st line
So he decided to use his cantus. => 2nd line

The 1st line is like this;
“Um, since it’s a river, I shouldn’t expect that it goes completely calm.”

I was a few years late on this anime, but I finally caught up and finished it just last night. I wanted to preserve the sentiments and emotions that were evoked lol therefore I’ve been visiting forums and soaking in everyone’s thoughts and opinions about the whole series. I was then led here — to, apparently, the original novel that started this whole fiasco — which you undertook to translate so generously.

Thank you for committing all your time, attention, work, resources, and crazy brain power to make this translation readily available for everyone.

I wasn’t here to watch the slow progression of updates, so I’m lucky to be able to just read everything in one go lol ^_^ <3 But, time is very important. And I'm chiming in with a comment to appreciate the time that you spent on this. I read above that you were also juggling college and your degree — needless to say, I hope everything has worked out for the best for you!

Hello! Big old time fan of the series! I finally got to downloading and reading the full novel, and I wanted to say: Thank you SO much for your efforts! I honestly can not thank you enough! This novel and beautiful piece of literature would have never reached us if it weren’t for your hard work, so thank you! QuQ

I recently read that there is a prequel in the works, and I found this link with the first pages:http://shousetsu-gendai.kodansha.co.jp/special/39.html
As far as I understand, it is published monthly?
Do you have any plans on picking it up for translation? Many of us would be over the moon with happiness and excitement!!

//also I wanted to donate something as a thanks, now that I finally read the novel, so I was looking for a donation button/link and saw your Q&A about this matter– I SWEAR TO GOD YOU ARE SO GENEROUS AND SELFLESS. Thank you so much again! Both for your efforts and for the charity list too <3

hey! sorry for the super late reply. i saw on a japanese blog that the these files aren’t from the beginning of the story and i haven’t been able to find any uploads of the old issues of shousetsu gendai. as far as i know the story was predicted to be finished at the end of 2018, but i haven’t seen or heard anything about it actually being finished :(

//also i totally recognized your username/your ssy art from when i used to have a tumblr. your art style has evolved quite a lot and it’s still stunning!

Hey, thank you so much for sharing this story with us! I was so delighted to discover that this translation existed. I loved it and I’m grateful for your hard work.
Wish you all the best, greetings from Hungary :)

I found “Shin Sekai Yori” when I was younger and I fell in love with it. Didn’t lean until recently that there was a novel, nor even a translation. Thank you so much for providing us with a translation!